Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/362

ening tempest. The cause which they were assembled to promote is one that nerves the soul to deeds of noble daring. The Convention had already adjourned late in the afternoon, when the mob which destroyed the building began to assemble. The doors were blocked up by the crowd, and the streets almost impassable from the multitude of "fellows of the baser sort." But these "American Women" passed through the whole without manifesting any sign of fear, as if conscious of their own greatness and of the protecting care of the God of the oppressed.

We give our readers these interesting pages of anti-slavery history because they were the initiative steps to organized public action and the Woman Suffrage Movement yer se, and to show how much more enthusiasm women manifested in securing freedom for the slaves, than they ever have in demanding justice and equality for themselves. Where are the societies to rescue unfortunate women from the bondage they suffer under unjust law? Where are the loving friends who keep midnight vigils with young girls arraigned in the courts for infanticide? Where are the underground railroads and watchful friends at every point to help fugitive wives from brutal husbands? The most intelligent, educated women seem utterly oblivious to the wrongs of their own sex; even those who so bravely fought the anti-slavery battle have never struck as stout blows against the tyranny suffered by women.

Take, for example, the resolution presented by Mary Grew, and passed in the Woman's Anti-Slavery Convention forty-three years ago, declaring that it was the Christian duty of every woman to withdraw from all churches that fellowshiped with slavery, which was a sin against God and man. Compare the conscience and religious earnestness for a principle implied in such a resolution with the apathy and supineness of the women of to-day. No such resolution has ever yet passed a woman's rights convention. And yet is injustice to a colored man a greater sin than to a woman? Is liberty and equality more sweet to him than to her? Is the declaration by the Church that woman may not be ordained or licensed to preach the Gospel, no matter how well fitted, how learned or devout, because of her sex, less insulting and degrading than the old custom of the negro pew?

The attitude of the Church to-day is more hostile and insulting to American womanhood than it ever was to the black man, by just so much as women are nearer the equals of priests and bishops than were the unlettered slaves. When women refuse to enter churches that do not recognize them as equal candidates for the joys of earth and heaven, equal in the sight of man and